Game night was a contextual clash of space and spice trading! Space Station Phoenix was first. Paul had multiple plays under his belt, and he cruised out to an early lead. Greg came storming back to challenge him in two of the majority control races. David locked down a third race but then his engine stalled.
I played like it was a game of A Feast for Odin, and one with whaling. Ugh, that’s not a pretty sentence. In other words, I had station B-4 and was trying to secure all of the humans. But humans are tricky: each one needs one water, one plant, one metal (for their spacesuit), and then you know, the actual human. I used the Expedition action a lot. Not very diverse, although it meant I had a ton of flexibility when it came to deciding which module bonuses I wanted.
Obtaining metal is difficult. The primary way to collect it is to deconstruct one of your ships and recycle it. With all of my expeditions, I hoped to roll well — I even had a free reroll! Unfortunately that didn’t happen very often, and I had to trade for metal.
The game space was fun to explore, and Paul’s experience won out in the end!
Game Two
We turned back the clock a thousand years or more to tea trading in China with Yunnan. The game is very opaque to me. The other people at game night love it. I keep hoping that it will eventually come together in my head.
I was the start player, so I paid for an advancement with my horse. Paul took another worker, and Greg paid ¥12 for a horse step. David went last, and bought cheaply. He got three things for a total of ¥15: a step in influence, border crossings, and a building.
This ended up being a great start for him! He built a Tea House in Yunnan. He then managed to get extra workers for ¥9 each most of the time. The rest of us were going after buildings and horses first. Lastly, he put most of his workers in Yunnan and get ¥6 each which he took as pure points. We could not catch him!
Despite getting all the way to Qinghai and collecting six gift tiles along the way, I finished in last place. Again. This game is still opaque to me!
